On the 9th Anniversary of 9/11, A Call to Close Guantánamo and to Hold Accountable Those Who Authorized Torture

11.9.10

On the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001 that prompted the launch of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror,” the closure of Guantánamo and calls for accountability for those who instigated torture and established secret prisons and imprisonment without charge or trial remain as important as ever.

This is especially true because, on this particular anniversary, the crimes and injustices initiated by the Bush administration are, arguably, less in the public eye than at any time in the last six years. In 2004, after the Abu Ghraib scandal first alerted US citizens to a culture of torture and abuse that was sanctioned at the highest levels of government (however much the administration tried to brush it off as the work of “a few bad apples”), the US Supreme Court intervened, in Rasul v. Bush, to raise awareness of the lawless plight of the prisoners at Guantánamo by granting them habeas corpus rights, allowing lawyers to visit the men and to begin to puncture the veil of secrecy in which Guantánamo had been shrouded for the first two and a half years of its existence.

From then until the end of Bush’s presidency, the administration and Congress did their best to ignore the Supreme Court’s ruling, with Congress reiterating its support for the President’s malign policies through the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, both of which purported to strip the prisoners of their habeas rights. Nevertheless, awareness of the injustice of Guantánamo grew steadily. During his second term, President Bush was obliged to pull back from various excesses, effectively closing his global network of secret prisons in September 2006, when he moved 14 “high-value detainees” from secret CIA prisons to Guantánamo, after the Supreme Court had forcefully inserted the Geneva Conventions’ obligation to treat prisoners humanely into his calculations in another important ruling in June 2006, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.

In Boumediene v. Bush, a third ruling in June 2008, the Supreme Court reiterated that the Guantánamo prisoners had habeas corpus rights, ruling that the legislation passed by Congress that purported to strip the prisoners of their habeas rights was unconstitutional, and paving the way for a succession of habeas petitions to reach the US courts — 54 so far, of which 38 have been won by the prisoners.

When Barack Obama came to power, there was a sudden wave of interest in Guantánamo, and in President Bush’s legacy of torture and secret detention, but nine years on from 9/11, eight years and eight months since Guantánamo opened, and 20 months into Obama’s presidency, it is clear that, far from closing Guantánamo, as he promised in an executive order on his second day in office, President Obama now oversees a culture of indifference with regard to the fate of the Guantánamo prisoners, those held in the US prison at Bagram airbase, and others subjected to the CIA’s program of “extraordinary rendition” and secret prisons, many of whom are still unaccounted for.

The second reason is because 58 of the 93 men are Yemenis, and, in January, the President established an open-ended moratorium on releasing any Yemenis (even those cleared by his Task Force, or even — with one embarrassing exception — by the US courts) after a hysterical response to the news that the failed Christmas Day plane bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had been recruited in Yemen. The fact that this constitutes “guilt by nationality” appears to trouble no one.

Of the other 83 men, 48 have been designated by the Task Force as men who should continue to be held indefinitely without charge or trial, even though this policy was at the heart of President Bush’s disturbing post-9/11 innovations, and another 32 are scheduled to face trials of some sort. However, as recent reports have shown, the administration does not appear to have the appetite to pursue cases either in federal court or in the revamped version of the Military Commissions that Obama revived with the aid of Congress (and in the face of sustained criticism from legal experts) last summer.

No appetite for trials

Capitulating to hysterical criticism, President Obama has backed down from Attorney General Eric Holder’s announcement in November 2009 that five men, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, would face federal court trials in New York for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attacks, and also appears to have backed down from Holder’s proposal to try five other men by Military Commission.

As with the prisoners in general, the administration has settled into a cosy rut, content to rely on the legislation passed by Congress the week after the 9/11 attacks — the Authorization for Use of Military Force — as its justification for holding prisoners indefinitely, with occasional interruptions for their habeas petitions, or for trials by Military Commission. What no one wants to discuss is that the AUMF is, essentially, the founding document of the Bush administration’s indefinite detention program, used as the justification for holding prisoners neither as prisoners of war, according to the Geneva Conventions, or as criminal suspects to be tried in federal courts.

The fact that the Obama administration publicly declared an end to the coercive interrogations and torture practices that were also part of President Bush’s program does not compensate for the fact that the detention policy itself remains fatally flawed, authorizing the detention of the Guantánamo prisoners as a unique category of human being, even if they are no longer referred to as “enemy combatants.” Moreover, in maintaining this woeful state of affairs, the administration, Congress and the judiciary are all implicated.

As well as justifying inertia at the heart of the administration, this reliance on the AUMF has also infected the habeas legislation. Although 38 prisoners have won their habeas corpus petitions over the last two years — providing the most sustained, high-level critique of endemic faults in the government’s supposed evidence, including a regular reliance on torture and unreliable witnesses — the majority of the 16 men who have lost their habeas petitions have done so not because they were involved with terrorism, but because they were foot soldiers for the Taliban (or, in two cases, a medic and a cook). The AUMF not only fails to distinguish between al-Qaeda (a terrorist group) and the Taliban (at the time of the US-led invasion, a government with an army, however reviled internationally), but consigns both to ongoing indefinite detention if the judges in the District Court in Washington D.C. conclude that the government has established, “by a preponderance of the evidence,” that they were involved with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

No justice at Bagram

While this fundamental problem needs tackling (but is thoroughly ignored in the mainstream media), the Obama administration’s record is even worse in Afghanistan. In March 2009, three foreign prisoners rendered to Bagram up to seven years previously won their habeas petitions, when Judge John D. Bates ruled that their situation was, essentially, no different from that of the prisoners at Guantánamo, and that the habeas rights extended to the Guantánamo prisoners by the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush should extend to them as well.

However, rather than accepting Judge Bates’ ruling, the Obama administration appealed, winning in May this year, and thereby demonstrating that, unlike Guantánamo, Bagram would remain a genuine Bush-era legal black hole. A new appeal on behalf of these three men was submitted last week — including new evidence, which I first reported in 2007, in my book The Guantánamo Files, confirming that one of the men, Fadi al-Maqaleh, a Yemeni, was transferred to the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, before being rendered back to Bagram — but it would be unwise to assume that this appeal will be successful.

No accountability for torture

On torture, rendition and accountability, Bagram also features prominently as an example of President Obama hiding exceptions to the absolute ban on torture that he announced in an executive order on his second day in office, with numerous reports of a secret prison within Bagram, and of temporary holding facilities throughout Afghanistan that are also beyond the law.

In addition, in February, the President failed to prevent a notorious Justice Department “fixer,” David Margolis, from rewriting the conclusion to a damning internal investigation into the conduct of two lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel who wrote and approved the notorious “torture memos” in August 2002, which purported to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA.

In writing and approving the memos, the two lawyers — John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee — twisted the law out of shape to provide the Bush administration with the phoney legal cover it required, and, along the way, besmirched the reputation of the OLC, which is obliged to provide impartial legal advice to the Executive branch. However, although the internal investigation found both men guilty of “professional misconduct,” Margolis insisted that they had only exercised “poor judgment,” thereby shutting the door firmly on calls for the two men (and those in the White House who were directing them) to be held accountable for their actions.

And finally, just two days ago, the Obama administration prevailed in further attempts to shield Bush administration officials from accountability, in a case against a Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., which provided logistical support for the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” program. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of five victims of the program, including Binyam Mohamed, the British resident who was rendered by the CIA to Morocco, where he was reportedly tortured for 18 months.

Last May, a panel of judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals took exception to the Obama administration’s reliance on the state secrets doctrine — a little used shield preventing judicial scrutiny of government actions, which was favored by President Bush — to prevent the case from proceeding. However, on Wednesday, by six votes to five, the full court upheld the government’s appeal, preventing the plaintiffs from having even a single day in court to tell the world what happened to them.

The use of the state secrets doctrine was clearly cynical, and serves only to demonstrate not only how far President Obama has strayed from his pre-election promises of transparent government, but also how closely he has clung to key aspects of President Bush’s belief in unfettered executive power.

The case may now proceed to the Supreme Court, but on the 9th anniversary of 9/11, as an insignificant pastor’s plan to burn copies of the Qur’an dominates headlines worldwide, the bleaker truth is that, when pushed, President Obama has chosen to insult Muslims far more deeply, essentially supporting legal maneuvering designed to ensure that Bush administration officials who authorized the torture of Muslims will not be held accountable, no matter how much the victims of these horrendous policies wish to present evidence of their torture in a US court.

20 Responses

I feel incredible contempt for Obama, most of congress, most of our judicial system and the press for all the reasons Andy Worthington outlined above. But I reserve my deepest contempt for those Americans who continue to support the abuse and suffering of others because it is cruelty inflicted by a Democrat not a Republican.

I did not understand that a great many people who spoke out against these actions under Bush did not mean a word they said. They have either stood silent or actively sanction these actions by supporting Obama and Congressional Democrats. The willingness to trade out the suffering of others for access to power disgusts me more than I can say. How little do most of these people realize they are simply pawns in the process of destroying every right held by a free people. They believe their freedom is assured by their affiliation to team Democrat. Aside from the utter moral depravity of this stance, how stupid can they be? Once rights are surrendered, one must be very high up the food chain to have any chance of asserting them.

It is the authoritarians, the worshipers of power who will take down this nation. Neither the president, the courts nor the congress could tear our nation asunder if enough people valued the lives of others, valued justice.

If anyone knows how to reach such people, please tell me. On jonathanturley.org, posters were describing how, “tea baggers smelled and needed a good cleaning”. Once such language is used, these posters’ humanity is lost. It is obvious that the propaganda of divide and conquer has been successful. Each of these “cleansers” considers themselves educated and enlightened. For them, what Andy Worthington writes about has NO meaning. Only the ignorance of the Koran burners will incense them. The torture, murder, rapes and destruction commanded by those they adore are ignored or worse, honored. I was never as scared under Bush as I am now.

The worst part of Obama, a Democrat, putting his stamp of approval on the worst of the Bush-era abuses of law and human rights violations, is that it has had the effect of making them all “normal” and now status quo. When Bush, a right-wing Republican neo-con, did these things, the “left” was rabid and all these horrors were held up as examples of how far America had fallen.

BUT – once Obama, a Democrat, embraced them, with his rabid supporters defending everything he does simply because he is a Democrat (although they screamed when a Republican did them), these abuses have now settled firmly as acceptable, normal, and routine parts of America’s fabric and day-to-day operations.

That is Obama’s – and his blind lemming supporters’ – true crime. Making what used to be horrific crimes no longer any big deal.

He should be impeached, and then hung for the traitor he is.

“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag, carrying a cross.”
Sinclair Lewis, “It Cant Happen Here”, 1935

These anti-constitutional, anti-justice, anti-human rights acts that have received coverage in the press and are addressed critically in this article are not what most Americans want their country to be. The millions-of-deaths Vietnam war was not wanted by most Americans over some years. Most Americans did not want Bush as president for periods of time and most Americans do not support Obama now. When what is both legitimate and popular does not count, you have elements of totalitarianism operating. Presidents from either party have consistently twisted the facts and/or their own promises. As the congress has hardly checked criminal executive branch policies over the decades, a fair interpretation of the U.S. as a totalitarian operation becomes validated. President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the “military-industrial complex” threatened a democratic and constitutionally protected America. My own little free book download called “Revolution or Extinction” elaborates on these themes of a totalitarian America in chilling detail at this site http://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/revolution-or-extinction/11772671

Thanks Andy for keeping these issues alive when so many want to be asleep in a giant fog.

‘On the 9th Anniversary of 9/11, A Call to Close Guantánamo and to Hold Accountable Those Who Authorized Torture by Andy Worthington’

So many have pretended that torture was not part of American policies, that outright murder is not part of the US Justice System. They will continue to remain silent as the tortures and murders continue on. They will continue to stay silent, as men are held without trial or any due recourse.

“The use of the state secrets doctrine was clearly cynical, and serves only to demonstrate not only how far President Obama has strayed from his pre-election promises of transparent government, but also how closely he has clung to key aspects of President Bush’s belief in unfettered executive power.”

That Barry reneged his promises about transparency in government and to end the horrific use of off-shore prisons to house indefinetly those who have not been charged with any crime proves the difficulty of wresting power from would-be dictators once corrupt power is in their grasp.

Nancy Pushover’s declaration that “impeachment is off the table” set the stage for Barry’s continuation and expansion of W’s unprecedented power grab that shreded the US Constitution. Our so-called representatives are no longer accountable for their illegal actions.

We the People no longer can expect any due process from police, the courts or existing law.

It’s beyond disgusting that, just because a Democratic Administration in Washington continues where our last Republican Administration left off, that it’s perfectly alright. This, too, is an indication of how far America has fallen.

“President Barrak O’Bush’s complete adoption of the previous governments illegal policies is the main reason we will again be under the thumb of the corrupt Republicans in 2012.”

Well that is up to the people….If they prefer Republicans to Democrats that is their choice… is there really any choice at all..? They (the extremists Republican and Democrats) seem to have control now…no need to wait until 2012….

The only way to get Obama to “act” is to get others to act for him. In this and DADT, it’s the judges. Our dear leader apparently doesn’t like “confrontation” and happily swims in the same sewers as Dick Cheney unless someone steers him differently.

Thanks, Mui. Your swimming in the sewer analogy is excellent, and Heike, thanks for the encouragement, and for appreciating that I tried to pack in as much as possible into the article. The links, hopefully, are always worth following for background.

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Investigative journalist, author, campaigner, commentator and public speaker. Recognized as an authority on Guantánamo and the “war on terror.” Co-founder, Close Guantánamo, co-director, We Stand With Shaker. Also, singer and songwriter (The Four Fathers) and photographer. Email Andy Worthington